May 1956 - The Knoxville Season in Review
Thursday, May 5, 2005
May 1956 - The Knoxville Season in Review
By Bob Wilson
Early in the month of May, a horse named Needles won the 82nd running of the Kentucky Derby. The first sub-4-minute mile witnessed on U.S. soil was run by Australian Jim Bailey, a University of Oregon student. His time was 3:58.6. Only 30 whooping cranes were left in existence. Pat Flaherty won the 40th Indianapolis 500-Mile Car Race on May 30th. If you had a television you could watch each of these shows each Wednesday night on NBC: Screen Directors' Playhouse; Father Knows Best; Kraft Television Theater; This Is Your Life; Midwest Hayride. Friday nights on CBS offered Adventures of Champions, Mama, Our Miss Brooks, The Crusader, Schlitz Playhouse, The Lineup and Person To Person.
The 1956 race program at Knoxville featured modifieds and stocks. Like 1955, racing nights were on Fridays but Marion Robinson and the Fairboard had other ideas. Marion figured that his racing program could gain more cars if he switched to Saturdays. Chariton, a town 26 miles to the south of Knoxville, also had a weekly stock car program but it too was staged on Saturdays. On June 23, the Knoxville races were switched to Saturday in direct conflict with Southern Iowa Community Park at Chariton. Knoxville put up a total guaranteed purse of $500 with $52 to win the main event, a purse increase which was just too tempting for the drivers in this area. As it turned out, the Chariton track succumbed to the Knoxville move and track manager Junior (Earl) Hawkins switched to a Friday night format. The move nearly brought the half-mile Chariton Speedway to its knees. Eventually when Juanita Cooper, who later managed the Community Park speedway, was killed in a light airplane crash in Colorado, the proverbial final nails were driven in and Chariton closed for good in the early '60s. Today, no remnants of that once active race track remain.
May 30 - Dean Sylvester, Hetrick, Iowa edged Dean Woolheather of Des Moines in the 15-lap main event ($40 to win) as a field of 18 cars competed for a $300 total purse. The modifieds and stocks each had separate qualifying races but all were combined for the feature event.
(Watch here for more Knoxville Raceway year in review in June.)
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